The human traits of procrastination and impulsivity are genetically linked and stem from similar evolutionary origins, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Boulder that examined identical twins.

A paper based on the research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests the two characteristics are related to peoples' abilities to successfully pursue and juggle goals.

"Everyone procrastinates at least sometimes, but we wanted to explore why some people procrastinate more than others and why procrastinators seem more likely to make rash actions and act without thinking," Daniel Gustavson, the study's main author and psychological scientist at the university, said in a news release. "Answering why that's the case would give us some interesting insights into what procrastination is, why it occurs, and how to minimize it."

From an evolutionary standpoint, the study posits, impulsivity makes sense, since human ancestors likely would have tended to seek immediate gratification when even surviving the next day was a great uncertainty.

Yet, procrastination possibly developed more recently in human history -- or, a lot later, depending on your perspective.

In the contemporary world, there are distinct goals set for the future and when one is impulsive and easily distracted from those long-term goals, procrastination often ensues.

Therefore, people who are perpetual procrastinators may also be highly impulsive; but, what cognitive, biological or environmental influences caused that relationship?.

Gustavson explained the most effective way to investigate why the two traits are correlated would be to study identical human twins, who share 100 percent of their genes and provide researchers a fairly straightforward way to establish the comparative importance of genetic and environmental influences on particular behaviors -- like procrastination and impulsivity.

Gustavson and his research colleagues interviewed 181 pairs of identical twins and 166 fraternal-twin pairs on their inclinations toward impulsivity and procrastination, as well as their abilities to set and maintain goals.

They discovered not only that procrastination is inheritable, like impulsivity can be, but there also seems to be a complete genetic overlap between the two traits. That means the research found there are no genetic influences that are unique to either trait alone.

Procrastination, then, is apparently an evolutionary byproduct of impulsivity, one that manifests more today than during the times of our ancestors.

Gustavson's team found procrastination and impulsivity also overlapped genetically in terms of one's ability to manage goals, which supports the premise that delaying, making rash decisions and ultimately failing to achieve goals -- the typical modus operandi for many procrastinators -- all originate from the same genetic makeup.

"Learning more about the underpinnings of procrastination may help develop interventions to prevent it, and help us overcome our ingrained tendencies to get distracted and lose track of work," said Gustavson.